The second half of Final Fantasy XV ditches the open world road trip in favor of a series of linear areas connected by train, which raises an obvious question: How much of that was meant to be bigger? One player did some digging to try to find out.
Using an out-of-bounds glitch to escape the invisible walls of Cartanica (the mine area), Fotm Hero was able to explore the entire second continent, as showcased in this video:
It’s a fun video, full of sprawling, unused environments and floating train tracks. Also fun: Fantasizing about exploring that big snowfield.
We may never find out exactly how much of Niflheim was planned to be explorable before Final Fantasy XV’s various reboots and directional shifts. These areas certainly hint that bigger things were planned. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind: Environment art is relatively easy to implement. Far harder would be filling those environments with people, quests, and real content. Plus, a lot of this stuff may exist simply to give you something to look at when you’re on the train.